Authentic Instruction Lesson Overview

Authentic instruction has very straight forward principles
that carry quite a bit of meaning. This effective method of teaching gives
students a deeper learning experience that will stay with them due to learning
the how and why of something, rather than just dumping information. A brief
description of an authentic instruction based lesson could revolve around a
novel, for example. By having all of the students read the novel on their own,
they are building learner autonomy and responsible for gathering their
information. The students would then be put in collaborative groups and
instructed to draw a picture using textual evidence. The students would then
draw these pictures and cite the relevant information. This project would then
go a step further by asking the children to research the time period of the
novel. They would then add what they found through research to the picture,
such as buildings, fashion, and technology of the time period. A presentation
of the poster would not only teach the group who did the research, but also the
students listening.

This assignment
fits the criteria of authentic instruction due to giving the students learner
autonomy in their reading, making them active learners in group work and
drawing, having a holistic approach to
the information presented by continuing research, and engaging in complex and challenging
discussions to present this information to the class. Although the standard
would to cite textual evidence in a novel, the learning process was much more than
just picking sentences out of a passage, making it more engaging and fun for
the students.